


A Horrifically Wonderful Thing Happened

by ARogan



Category: Political RPF, Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: 2016 US Presidential Election, 2020 US Presidential Election, Alternate Universe - Fusion, American Politics, American Presidents, Crossover, Millenium Falcon (Star Wars), One Shot, Politics, Science Fiction, Some Humor, Surreal, Tongue monster, comeuppance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-01
Updated: 2020-11-01
Packaged: 2021-03-08 17:35:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,835
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27320563
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ARogan/pseuds/ARogan
Summary: Hey, this is my first story here. I hope you’ll check me out and maybe be surprised. Thanks for reading.The (original character) protagonist finds that two modern political figures have somehow taken the helm of one of your favorite spaceships. But they—one in particular—are in for a rough time.
Comments: 4
Kudos: 10





	A Horrifically Wonderful Thing Happened

**Author's Note:**

> I’d love your comments, reviews, and constructive criticism on the story, and I’m interested in feedback on my writing, too, as well as my tagging, since that's totally new to me. Thank you.  
> Thanks to my friends and wife for reading various drafts and for their feedback and encouragement.

I’m sweating, my body nearly rigid from adrenaline, as the old ship accelerates and shudders as it climbs through the atmosphere. I’m sitting in…yes, it’s one of the back seats in the Millenium Falcon’s cockpit—on the right side, you know, behind where Chewbacca usually sits. Looking ahead through the windshield I see the sky shift rapidly from dark blue to a black field of stars as we race away from the planet and the pull of its gravity. I feel my heart pounding rapidly, not just because we’ve just blasted into space, but because of that awful Thing! God, it’s still in my mind! It’s power! Why does the captain look so chill?

The Falcon streaks past the orbit of a moon in the direction of…well, I’m not sure. What I do know is that escaping Earth and that Thing does not mean we’re free, that we’ve escaped for sure. It has some kind of power. Massive power. I can’t stop thinking about it! It was, ugh—disgusting, grotesque.

And, somehow, I knew it wouldn’t let us get away so easily.

In front of me and to the left, President Trump is sitting at the helm, in the pilot seat. But, really, lounging would be a better word for what he’s doing. He has the seat reclined as far back as it will go—about 45 degrees. As usual, he’s wearing his suit, and his red tie is still snug in its proper place. What’s not clear is why his pants are undone. That’s right—his belt is unbuckled, his pants unbuttoned, and his fly is down. Go figure. He’s laughing and gabbing with the vice president, Mrs. Clinton, who sits in the copilot seat, to his right and in front of me.

Her seat, surprisingly, is reclined, too. Surprising because we know how stiff she can be. (Her pants suit is still looking smart, though.) And, also surprising, when she turns her head I can see that she, too, is smiling, though her jaw looks a bit tight and her eyes are downcast, as though looking at her feet, and only occasionally glancing up to look out the windshield or at the control console in front of the president. I try to read the situation. From her glances, it looks like Mrs. Clinton has no confidence that the president is paying any attention to where we are going. In fact, as I’m sure she has noticed, too, I can’t see that he is doing anything to steer or direct the ship or to monitor its course. He’s still just gabbing on, laughing, crossing his legs at the ankle now. She looks like she’s trying to play it cool, to not look too concerned. Obviously she wouldn’t be comfortable with his making fun of her for panicking. We all know it’s not as though she couldn’t hold her own and give it right back to him (in her own sober way). Of course, she could. It’s just, well, you know, he’s the president and she’s pissed and she can’t show any weakness.

“Wait till you see this place,” the president is saying. “It’s incredible. IN-CRE-DI-BLE. What we just went through to get off that shit-hole planet…you’ll say it was worth it. More than worth it…” He rambles on saying something about always knowing climate change was real, and that between that and predictions of a global pandemic, he knew we were doomed. “If only I could fucking tweet from space.”

Mrs. Clinton smiles and nods. At the same time, it seems like maybe she has a secret or that she might be keeping something to herself. As I think this, I get more anxious. But we seem to be in space now, so maybe I should chill out. There’s just something that her eyes seem to say when she averts them. But she shouldn’t worry about letting something on to the president, for he is clearly oblivious, as he pushes a button, apparently at random, and guffaws. But her eyes come up now and glance toward him, her face failing, for just a moment, to hide her horror, for now he has started to joke about the control panels and is pressing buttons on the ceiling panel above his seat, his head tipped back far enough that his red wisps fall out of place.

Then she breaks. “What are you doing?” Some sort of narrow stick suddenly smacks his hand. It came from her! She just hit the president’s hand!

“If you had any kind of sense, we wouldn’t be in this mess,” she says. “You think it’s all a game?” The president reaches out to try to grab the stick from her, his lips pursed in a mean-kid frown, but she’s too quick and pulls it out of his reach.

I decide I have to get away from the two of them if I’m going to be able to relax. I get up and head through the passage at the back of the cockpit. Mrs. Clinton is still shouting, “You call that policy? I’ll show you policy! Stop pushing my buttons….”

I know that R2-D2 and C-3PO are back in the main living area—you know, where Chewie and R2 play a sort of chess game with holographic monsters. The droids will be better company.

At the end of the passageway, I enter the large space with the secret cargo holds under the floor. Across it and a little off to my right is the living area, where I find R2 and Threepio just hanging out.

Threepio sees me and does his little stiff-armed jiggle. “Are you all right, sir?” he says. “You don’t look so well, if I may say so myself.” I start to speak, but Threepio interrupts: “I believe our captain has made a valiant escape.”

Well, R2 should be better company.

I ignore Threepio and lie down on a bench that extends from a wall. But as soon as I do, my anxiety rises and I sit up and brace my arms and legs. That tongue! God, it’s awful! I think I hear R2 chirp at me, but I’m too out of it to respond. It’s as though it has telepathic power to project itself into my mind: the thing is long, maybe the length of three Honda Civics end to end, pink and tapered with a round tip, taste buds shining with saliva. It’s image twists and wriggles, its muscular tongue-body contorting as it works its power.

Ahh! My head! It feels as though it’s pushing itself deeper and deeper into my mind! I should never have agreed to this mission.

The ship’s alarm begins to ring. A digital voice resounds through the ship: _“Tractor beam detected. Ship decelerating. Thrusters failing. Warning: Reduce thrust or reap the consequences!”_ The tongue is pulling us, I just know it, it’s trying to stop us and pull us back. Yes, just like the tractor beam on the Death Star! But really, it’s a massive, horrific tongue using the Force with planet gravity strength. I buckle one of the bench’s seat belts across my lap.

“Oh, no. We’re doomed,” says Threepio. R2 whines at him. Just as in the movie, Threepio begins to argue with R2 and berate him and is mostly useless and a nuisance to us.

As I’m experiencing the horror of the tongue interjected into my thoughts and the ship is rapidly decelerating, R2 is extending something from his body, though it doesn’t appear to be metal, as you would expect. It’s more like a stretchy, thin, flesh appendage, like a stretched-out piece of silly putty, that can stick to things. He’s trying to hold himself down with it. Don’t ask me why he doesn’t use the magnets in his feet.

On one wall there’s a large, flat video screen showing a view from the back of the cockpit, right between its seats. The camera angle allows me to see some of the side of the president’s and VP’s faces. The president is leaning forward and seems to be studying the control panel. He smashes his palm down on a button, but nothing happens.

The tongue is winning. It’s slowing us down. I’m sweating. What the hell are the prez and VP doing up there? All thrusters ahead, God damn it! But then I remember the ship’s warning—reduce thrust or reap the consequences. Fuck. At this point, we’re fucked either way.

 _Damn it!_ I read Trump’s lips say on the video screen, as he jabs his finger at more buttons and yanks on the steering control. His hair—the wisps that are still there—have shifted way out of place. Mrs. Clinton has gripped the armrests of her chair and is yelling at him, apparently having given up on her stick.

R2 whistles something that sounds a lot like droid for “uh-oh.”

As we begin hurtling back toward Earth and that awful tongue, I remember the secret cargo compartments in the floor. I spy one between me and the passageway to the cockpit. I unbuckle and drop onto all fours to crawl to it. I grab the handle, pry the cover up, and push it aside. As I lower myself down and replace the cover, I see R2 push Threepio into some sort of closet and follow him in. Then it’s dark. This crew member isn’t going down without a fight!

Let’s cut to the chase. I don’t know what it looks like for the ship to be pulled down through the Earth’s atmosphere by a lingual monster using the Force—I’m in a dark compartment—but it doesn’t feel good. There’s a lot of shuddering and shaking and I’m bounced against the sides of the compartment like ice in a galactic bartender’s cocktail shaker. Why I decided to come down here instead of staying buckled up, I’m not sure. I guess I wanted to be ready for the tongue. I am sure I’ll be bruised and sore, if I live to tell about this. Then the ship crash-lands, which feels hard and awful. The cargo compartment cover jumps a few inches on impact and lands out of place, leaving a small gap that light comes through. From the feel of it, the ship has come to rest leaning a few degrees to its left side.

As I steady my head and get oriented, I look out through the gap and can still see the video screen showing the cockpit. There’s a loud moan, apparently coming through a speaker, and I see on the screen that President Trump has been thrown against the forward console. He hadn’t buckled in. His body must have hit a switch that turned on the public address system. Mrs. Clinton was smart—we knew she was—and had buckled up. When Trump slowly pushes himself back into his reclined chair, I can see that his face got beat up from the impact.

And now, no! That terrible projection of the tongue is back in my mind, only much more intense now that we’re back on the planet’s surface. I grab my head. Oh, God. It’s like I can hear its sound in my mind, “lllollaawww uuhhlllaaahhcchhlll…” Even though it has no mouth, lungs, or vocal cords, its powerful writhing and flicking somehow make a sound in my mind. And it’s getting louder. On the screen I see and hear the president and vice arguing and cursing at each other, their voices raised. Through the gap, I look toward the passageway that leads to the cockpit.

Then there’s a scream. I can’t tell if it’s the president or Mrs. Clinton. I look at the monitor…and there it is, looming large outside the cockpit window. It must be at least fifteen feet long, maybe twenty, and hovers, salivating, with its tip just outside the glass.

The president and Mrs. Clinton seem frozen, transfixed in their chairs, staring at it. And then, it’s on.

A quick ripple runs down the huge tongue from back to tip, and I watch on the screen as the president, still unbuckled, flies from his chair and smashes against the cockpit windows. His face and chest are pressed against a panel of glass as he lets out a whimpering scream that carries over the ship’s intercom. Using the Force, the tongue holds him there and licks the glass with its tip, leaving a large swipe of saliva. Then its pinkness pulls back several yards and wriggles again, swells its muscular strength, and the glass around Trump begins to crack. Another pulse runs down its length, and it pulls him, head and chest-first, through the shattering glass and window frame. The arms of his suit coat get shredded on the way out, and a jagged edge slices down the back of his pant leg and pulls his shoe off by the heel. He flies the short distance through the air towards the tongue, which catches him with a smooth flick, wrapping him face-up in a corkscrew full-body hold.

Then, it holds him there.

The tongue holds him as though it is savoring. Wetness thickens on its bumpy surface. The president doesn’t move, doesn’t make a sound. His eyes are closed, and he lies prone with the back of his head pressed against the bulk of the tongue. It has the president’s chin pressed to his chest so he’s facing back toward us. The rest of its length wraps around him twice, pinning his arms at his sides and binding him at the ankles.

The president is motionless. I can see that he’s in a freeze state, that state of a prey when the grip of the predator’s jaws induces an instinctual survival mode of last resort, an unconscious attempt to trick the predator into thinking the prey is already dead and therefore not so interesting. Only, in this case, there are no jaws. I feel a satisfied sense of comeuppance. Mrs. Clinton is still in her chair, staring straight ahead. I don’t know if she is psychologically frozen or just staying put until she sees a way out. It seems she can’t take her eyes from what she is witnessing.

She certainly can’t expect that her seat belt, which held her through the crash, will keep her safe.

The tongue begins to contract its muscles. The corkscrew form tightens around the president’s body, beginning with his legs. The tongue tip twists around further, and his feet suddenly cross at the ankles. I shiver. At first, he just groans and emits pathetic cries. These sounds are all the more disturbing since they are coming through the hole in the broken cockpit window to the intercom, which sends them echoing through the passageways of the ship.

As the squeezing continues, the screaming begins—primal, high-pitched, terrified screams. Screams like the ones that people would have screamed when the president’s Mother of All Bombs was dropped near them but didn’t kill them. Between the screams there are more guttural, awful-sounding moans, as his legs, hips, and then torso are compressed. I notice then that I’m wet with sweat and shaking.

But something more is happening, something with his skin—no, his flesh. Then I realize: he is being digested.

I look away. I just don’t have the stomach for it. Just before I do, Mrs. Clinton finally breaks her gaze, unbuckles, and is out of her chair and scrambling down the passageway, out of the screen’s view. I hear the tongue finishing him off. He’s not making any sounds, there’s just the sucking and smacking sounds from the monster. Then, once it’s nearly quiet, I peek back out through the gap. On the screen, there is just the tongue with a few small, wretched pieces of the former president and businessman’s body and clothes dripping off its sides. It’s done. He has been, somehow, devoured.

Mrs. Clinton comes into view through the gap above me, gasping and stumbling down the passageway, since the ship is tilted to the left. When she reaches the end, she braces a hand against the wall and her eyes cast around the space. She notices me through the gap down in the cargo hold.

“We’ve got to get out of here,” she says. But when I don’t move, she turns and tries the button on the wall that would lower the ship’s main access ramp. But nothing happens. She smashes her hand against it again then starts looking around. She looks back down at me and I read panic on her face.

“What other way out of here is there?” she says.

I just shrug my shoulders. I don’t want her to get any ideas about coming down in here with me. That thing is going to be after her next, not me – no need to attract attention to myself. She crosses the room to a more interior wall of the Falcon, apparently looking for another way out.

I know this is a mistake. You see, I’d had the Millennium Falcon toy when I was a kid. It was a Christmas present from my grandparents when I was about seven or so (this is like, 1979, two years after Star Wars came out), and I don’t think I’ve ever been happier about a Christmas present since. The toy was big enough to fit the four-inch tall action figures inside. They could sit in seats in the cockpit or hang out in the big common area in the back, where the main ramp could actually lower. But that was it. There were no other spaces. So that’s why I knew that Mrs. Clinton was going nowhere. It’s just a wall of ship’s equipment over there.

As she searches the wall, there’s a noise nearby. It’s the sound of metal parts rubbing—a couple short noises and then quiet. Then a louder, longer sound of thick metal straining and bending. It is coming. From the cargo compartment I can’t tell exactly where the sound is coming from, but I have an idea. Mrs. Clinton pauses her search to look back past me toward the source of the sound. She’s looking toward the main ramp. She starts toward me and I slide the cover further closed, so that there’s just a paper-thin crack for me to see what’s going on. I can still see in the direction of the cockpit passageway, which includes the area above the ship’s ramp.

I hear more sounds of metal under great stress and Mrs. Clinton cry out, and then she’s running back into the passageway to the cockpit. That seems like her best move.

The crying of metal stops in a tremendous bang that vibrates through the ship. The ramp must have given way. I hold my breath and move as close to the crack as I dare, to see. And then it’s there. It’s rounded, pink tip coming up the ramp into view, shining with wetness and floating a couple feet above the floor. It continues moving, slowly, up into the large living space. I pull back a little from the gap. Saliva is sagging off the edge of it. I’m able to see its whole body slide past my view, but never all at once. I feel the edge of its lingual-kinetic force brush against my skin. I tense and sweat but try not to move. Then, after its larger back end moves past my view, it’s gone for a moment. My whole body becomes taut. It had to be there, still in the space above me. I’m crouched, waiting in the darkness. Finally, I see the tip come into view—it has circled, passing above my covered compartment. It heads toward the passageway…

…proceeding where Mrs. Clinton has gone.

I watch through the crack as the tongue slowly cruises over like a Star Destroyer. I’m not betting on Mrs. Clinton. What chance does she have? But I have no stake in her survival. Right? I hesitate. Should I help her? Hmm. I suppose she’s the president now; succession, you know. But I don’t care about that. Why should I risk my life? Sacrifice my life, is more like it. It’d be a suicide mission, right? The questions float around me in the darkness of the smuggler’s cargo hold.

Through the crack I see that the fatter end of the terrible monster must be nearly overhead. I realize then: my own survival, and perhaps even that of my innocent droid crewmates, likely depends on my acting as soon as possible. If she’s saved in the process, well, lucky her.

The back end of the tongue comes into view through my crack. Most of it has moved into the passageway now. I push up on the compartment lid and shift it to the side as slowly and soundlessly as I can, just enough for my head and shoulders to get through. I’m counting on the tongue staying focused on Mrs. Clinton, otherwise this might be it for me. I hesitate an instant as I picture the former president’s fate. The tongue has an odor, a bad one, like…oh, right – blood and mutilated flesh. I gird my stomach and poke my head up to scan the space around me for what I can use. I’m not even sure what weakness the tongue has that I might exploit.

I notice a long, thick metal shaft on the floor near the ramp opening. It’s one of the stanchions that connected the ramp to the hull of the ship. It must have broken off when the tongue entered. I hear the quietest sound and see R2 watching me through the open door of his closet. The stanchion looks broken and jagged at one end where it must have been ripped from a connection point. It also looks really heavy. I have no other ideas, and the tongue is fully out of the main living space, its back end nearly filling the passageway. I have to move.

Where is Chewie when I need him?

The tongue must be within reach of Mrs. Clinton, but I don’t hear any noise. I try not to make noise, either, as I take the few steps to the metal shaft. I size it up, trying to remember my basic high school weightlifting instructions—straight back, lift with legs. I squat, grasp the blunt end with both hands, and try to stand but can barely budge it. R2 makes a soft sound that I can only guess is encouragement. Doing my best not to grunt, I do my own version of a power lift and manage to heave the end up to my left shoulder, leaving the jagged tip resting on the floor in front of me. I slide forward until my shoulder is about where I figure the balance point is. It takes nearly all my strength to lift the tip and balance the beam parallel to the ground.

I rotate to face the passageway, where the large backside of the tongue hovers just a couple yards in. It fills more than half the width and height and must be nearly as long as the passageway. There’s a left bend in the passageway closer to the cockpit that I can’t see past, but the back end of the tongue is moving, and I can only imagine what the other end might be doing.

I feel sweat slide down my temples. Fuck. This is it. As I brace my feet and point the shaft’s jagged tip at the center of mass, adrenaline swells my muscles and my whole body. I plunge forward with the recklessness of a running back who realizes his weight is no match against that of his opponent.

“Aaaarrrrgghhh!”

Bull’s eye.

Blood bursts and runs as the shaft's tip breaks through and sinks at least a foot into the thick flesh. The tongue goes wild, wriggling intensely as it struggles, wrenching me back and forth. The shaft anchored in the tongue helps me stay on my feet, and I hold on as tight as I can, spreading my feet and shuffling with it to keep my balance. I realize I won’t last long if it keeps this up. I double my effort, feeling the adrenaline kick in as I lean with everything I have and let out a primal groan with the knowledge that I have to succeed, or die. My weapon cuts through several more inches of flesh, until the resistance of the tissue is too great.

The blood continues to run down. My legs are already starting to tire, and my feet are slipping, but the tongue’s vigor isn’t quite as strong, either. That’s when I notice, beneath me, the stream of blood that’s been running around my boots.

The tongue drops its back end downward, slamming me to the floor and pulling the metal shaft from my arms. The back end of the shaft is now resting on the floor, and I scramble to my knees and throw an arm over it to maintain some pressure in the wound. I look up and can now see over the tongue, and in the upper corner of the passageway, at the bend, I see the tip. Fuck. It’s bent around toward me and is pulling at that edge of the bend in the wall, trying to inch its way back.

“Oh, no, we’re doomed,” says Threepio, somewhere off to the side. “I’m going to play dead.”

R2 beeps a scolding at Threepio and then a quick succession of encouraging whistles at me.

I strain with my legs to try to jam the shaft deeper. The tongue’s tip reacts, shuddering for just a moment. Then it disappears, slipping back up the passageway out of sight. I take a breath and keep pushing. But I’m caught off guard when the whole tongue heaves backward. I keep my grip on the shaft and throw a leg over it to use all my weight to hold it in place.

The tongue moves forward now, which loosens the shaft in the wound but not enough to fully dislodge it.

“No, you don’t,” I say out loud and start to push the shaft back in deep, but the tongue jolts back again and starts to slide us rapidly backward. With my leg and one arm still slung over the inclined shaft, I’m riding it across the top of the covered cargo holds when it stops dead and my weight throws me backward against a wall. The back end of the shaft has struck a wall, halting the tongue’s backward thrust.

I look up, expecting to see the front end of the tongue coming at me. But first I see that the shaft’s sudden stop has propelled it even deeper into the tongue’s flesh. The tongue is far enough out of the passageway that it’s now flexing its body and extracting its front half, which rises and begins to turn toward me. But I see that the fight has taken its toll: the tip and much of the rest of it has shriveled from the massive blood loss. Its movement is slow and unsteady as it tries to bend its tip around, its back end still anchored down by the shaft.

It never makes it. The monster body gradually sinks down, the emaciated tip the last part to come to rest on the floor. The blood that seeps from the wound is barely a dribble.

I stand up and look at the whole of the thing I’ve been fighting.

R2 beeps a short, gleeful sound, a succinct exclamatory ending to the danger.

“Thanks, R2,” I say. I slump back against the wall. I’m still catching my breath, and my heart hasn’t stopped pounding.

“Is it over?” Threepio peeks out from the closet. “All that blood. Oh, creator!”

I look past the long tongue body and into the passageway. Time to go see about Mrs. Clinton. I step around the large end of the tongue and head toward the cockpit, careful not to slip on the blood. I try to stay out of the saliva, too, but it glistens on pretty much every surface as I head up the passageway. As I round the 45-degree turn, I wonder if she was able to stay out of the tongue’s reach.

I had expected I might find her hiding somewhere in the cockpit, but when I get there, I see no sign of her. Nothing. There is the broken window the president was pulled through; perhaps she escaped that way. The pilot seat is still reclined as President Trump left it.

They’re gone. Both of them.

I take a deep breath and look out the windows. 

Outside, I see my backyard with its maple tree and kids’ playset, the sandbox nearby. It’s a cloudy fall day, quiet except for a breeze. I’m exhausted, but I realize that the world is waiting for us. All of us. There’s no one in charge anymore.

Maybe there never really was.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading. A large part of this story came from a dream I had in Jan. 2019. Unlike most dreams I have, later that afternoon I could still remember it vividly and felt compelled to start writing it down that evening. Let me know what you thought.


End file.
